"Then I Look at the Stars!"

Okay, this might not (probably won't) interest anyone else too much, but here goes:

The brightest galactic flash ever detected hit the earth's atmosphere on Dec. 27th of last year, it was caused by a magnetar 50,000 light years away. Magnetar's are super pulsars (remnants of a supergiant's nova) which create the strongest magnetic fields known in the galaxy.

Now, the strange thing is that Dec. 26th of last year was the date for the huge pacific Tsunami, which was caused by an earthquake... now, some people are hypothosizing that maybe this huge burst of energy from the magnetar might have touched-off the earthquake. While the actual chance of this is somewhere between "extremely slim" to "none," nevertheless, reading about the whole event in question (like most topics in astronomy) is an amazing opportunity for speculative wonder...

here's where you can find the source story:

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/bright_flash_050218.html